Importance Inflation Or: Why Your Shiny Job Title Doesn't Impress People

I'm directing this one to my fellow industry members. Much merriment and incredulity ensued when I discovered that the title for the person who makes sandwiches in Subway was "Sandwich Artist", but in reality, people who work in the digital field don't have it much better with job titles. So lets be honest with ourselves, folks, a lot of big name people in this industry have really silly job titles, or foist them upon their unwilling underlings.

Pet Peeve One: Incredibly Verbose Titles

Project Manager means different things to people who work in other industries. But it generally means this - someone who manages budgets and manages projects. The thing is, job titles DO mean something, especially if you're dealing (or looking to deal) with more traditional industries. There's a very simple and linear structure to them in the finance and law industries. I have a pal who works in investment in London – they are one of those people that the media got so angry about recently – and their job titles have a very simple structure. It goes: analyst > manager > associate director > director. When you're trying to explain SEO to someone in a pitch and your job title is 11 words long, it's a bit daft.

Account Manager means that you manage accounts. Analysts means you analyse things. Calling someone a Senior User/Customer Experience Insight Digital Strategist (this is from an genuine job advert I saw recently) just makes both the employee and your company look a bit silly; you're still just a project manager or account manager with a focus on a specific wee area.

Pet Peeve Two: Inappropriate Usage Of The word "Architect"

Listen, everyone. A traditional architect is someone who designs buildings and physical systems. A software architect is an advanced programmer who designs the data structures within virtual systems. The word implies a huge amount of knowledge in design of specialised, expert systems with a deep insider knowledge developed over long years of study and practical experience.You can't be a link architect by submitting work to a few directories or writing a few articles, and you can't be a social architect by uploading a few of your promo videos to YouTube and then clicking the +1 button, any more than you can be an ice cream electrician. Giving yourself a grandiose job title when your work just can't compare to this name just doesn't make any sense.

Pet Peeve Three: Inappropriate Usage Of The Word "Evangelist"

Anyone with this job title is generally the worst kind of unbearable PR drone. Please, just call yourself Customer Relations to stop offending both me and the Evangelist community (who are two of the most morally opposed sets of people you could probably never meet, so well done for offending us all). I know that you're just SO EXCITED about being a shill for Microsoft Silverlight or something equally enthralling, but .. really? No-one else is.

Pet Peeve Four: "Guruism"

Last time I checked, Gurus were guys who sat around on top of mountains, not eating enough and offering their followers some insight into the universe. This generally coincides with some dippy looking girls in a Sari hanging around the spot with a faint odour of "joss sticks" in the air.I wasn't aware that meant that knowing all there is to know about a certain http header, or how to get people to read the emails you send them, qualified you for that sort of thing, but there you go.

Pet Peeve Five: The Word "Synergy"

It's the archetypal horrible business buzzspeak word. Just don't use it, please. ESPECIALLY don't inflict the title of "Synergist" on someone working across a couple of digital disciplines. That is a crime against grammar, and against the poor unfortunate person lumped with it. £100,000 a year wouldn't be enough to cover the shame of having to tell people what your job title is at parties. SEO folk usually have to just say "web designer" anyway, don't make it worse for them.

Any particular stinkers of job titles you've seen? We'd love to hear about them.